(a short story)
by Kerry Ann Wiley
The Diagnosis
We were driving toward the cabin. She tried to talk. The tests and diagnosis had landed hard. Outside the window, the trees blurred past us in streaks of green and shadow. “Stable” had meant something different when she was flat on the table. Now it felt like a sentence. She wasn’t dying. She wasn’t improving. She was just stuck.
“Julian.”
I looked at her.
“What exactly is it?” she asked. “All of it. Not just what they said in the office. What did you hear?”
I turned down the heat, rubbed my hand across my jeans like wiping something off, then nodded. “It’s called length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy.”
“Length-dependent means the longest nerves—legs, feet—are hit first. That’s why you feel it there. Numbness, weakness, muscle control issues. It can move up.”
“To my hands.”
“Yes.”
“And sensorimotor?”
“Both sensation and movement. Not just one. You lose feeling. Control.”
She flexed her fingers. “They said it’s idiopathic,” she murmured.
“No known cause. Not diabetes. Not genetic. They tested for autoimmune triggers. Nothing definite.”
“So, they don’t know why.”
“No.”
The word hit harder than expected. She pressed her thumb against the seam of the seat belt. It was a habit—automatic.
“Julian,” she said, I could see the question forming in her face before the words reached me.
“What’s the difference between peripheral neuropathy and what they’re calling length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy?”
There was a quiet uncertainty in her voice, as if she was trying to make sense of something that didn’t quite fit. Had they gotten it wrong? I told her the two are closely related—peripheral neuropathy is a broad term for damage to the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord, while length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy describes a more specific pattern.
It tends to affect the longest nerves first, often starting in the feet and moving upward, involving both sensation and movement. So no, they hadn’t necessarily made a mistake—the newer term just offers a little more detail. Still, I understood how that detail could feel like a new kind of uncertainty.
“What about impact?” The last word she spoke hung there—long term—and I felt its weight settle in the space between us. I glanced over, unsure how much to say.
You could lose more function,” I said quietly. “Fine motor control. Balance. Grip.” I hesitated, then added, “You might not run again. Or climb.” The rest didn’t need to be said. It was already there, just beneath the surface, waiting.
“Or write,” she said.
“And short-term?”
“Falls. Atrophy from overcompensating. Chronic fatigue. More bracing. PT.”
She went quiet. Color crept up her neck, across her face.
“Stop,” she said. “Stop.”
The Break
We pulled off on a gravel shoulder. She fumbled for the door handle—missed twice. I caught her hand. A panic attack doesn’t scream at first. It starts with a breath she can’t finish.
Her shoulders twitched, a subtle shiver, like she was trying to shake off something invisible and suffocating. Her breath shifted—short, fast, barely reaching her chest before slipping out again.
Each inhale stacked against the next, too tight, too quick. Her hands clenched, then opened, then clenched again, as if her body was cycling through the only motions it could still control.
She didn’t look at me. She was inches away, but already somewhere else—her eyes were distant, unreachable.
“I’ve lost everything,” she said, her voice barely holding together. It wavered, then cracked open in the middle.
“You don’t even touch me anymore. You don’t touch me like I’m still me.” The last words drifted out, quieter than the rest, but heavier somehow—like she’d been carrying them for too long.
I didn’t answer; her hands trembled, her lungs caught, and when I reached out—“Kerry”—she folded forward with her elbows on her knees and her palms pressed to her temples, not crying or speaking, just unraveling.
Her body jerked with each inhale. I could hear the panic rising—breath fighting logic. I moved beside her and placed a hand on her back. Her spine flinched—but she didn’t move away.
I stayed like that. Still. Then—seconds or minutes—I couldn’t tell—her breath caught. And her body collapsed into mine. I held her. Not tightly.
She felt heavier now. There had been months of appointments, driving, and waiting. I kept pretending I didn’t see her disappearing by inches. I’d held it together because someone had to.
Yet on the side of the road, her sobs finally broke me. They didn’t stop. They just kept coming—deep, full-body grief. For once, she wasn’t holding back.
The Ask
It was dark now. No one said it, but we were staying. “It’s too late,” I said. “Too far to drive.” She didn’t reply. “It’s going to get cold. I need to get the sleeping bags.”
I opened the back hatch. My hands were shaking, and I blamed the air. Everything smelled like fire and rubber. The gear was still there from trips we’d started but never finished. The first sleeping bag snagged, and my fingers fumbled with the zipper—not from the cold.
I rubbed my hands on my jeans. I didn’t want her to see the tremble. She hadn’t moved. She was still curled in the passenger seat, looking spent.
“Touch me like I’m still me,” echoed in my ears. I’d been waiting to hear it—since before the ring, since she stopped reaching back, since I pretended it didn’t matter.
I laid the bags flat in the back—foam pad, emergency setup. Like the Catskills, two summers ago, after the ankle.
I returned to her side and helped her swing out her legs. She let me support some of her weight, not all. We got to the back. She sat—knees up, hands trembling. The motion was familiar, but nothing about it felt the same.
Then—“Please help me take the brace off.” Her voice was slow.
I crouched and undid the first strap. The next strap fought back. I was careful. I didn’t look at her face—just watched my hands, her skin, the deep red impressions left by the brace. I eased the last strap loose and slid it down her calf. The cold was settling in, clinging to everything it touched.
She slipped inside the first sleeping bag. I opened the second, layered it over both of us. Sealed the edge. Sleep didn’t come. She drifted. Her breath kept shifting.
At 2:07 a.m., she moved. Her hand traced up my back.
My breath caught—once, sharp and fast. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came. Instead, the tears did. They carried my grief, my guilt, and the version of myself I believed she no longer needed. I held her tighter, afraid that if I let go, she would disappear again.
The Morning After
At 5:04 a.m., I opened my eyes. We hadn’t moved.
She stirred, and I gently slipped my arm from under her. We moved slowly, still half in the quiet of sleep. I reset the front seats and cracked the window open. The cold air helped clear the weight of stillness lingering between us. She handed me one sleeping bag, already rolled. The other stayed folded in her lap, untouched.
I started the car. The engine startled us both. We pulled onto the road. Gravel crunched. Headlights swept the trees. We were going to the cabin. It had its battle marks, but it was still safe, still ours. Familiar ground, even if we weren’t anymore.
The First Yes
The cabin came into view just after 7:00 AM. Fog clung to the windows, and the porch boards were dark with moisture. I parked the car and sat for a moment before opening the door. “I’ll go light the fire.”
She nodded, fingers clenched around the blanket.“I need a shower,” she said.
I grabbed the bags while she stepped down on her own—brace still off, gait uneven but holding.
Inside, I turned to the fireplace, stacking kindling, then logs. The flame caught, but my eyes kept drifting. I could hear her moving—slow, deliberate—behind the closed bathroom door. Water ran, then stopped. Twenty minutes passed. I stayed by the fire, waiting, unsure if I should knock or let her be.
I tried to stay with the fire, but the quiet started pressing in. I crossed the floor barefoot, careful not to make a sound. Paused. Knocked once.
“Yeah.”
“Wanted to see if I could jump in next.”
The door eased open. She stood there in a gray robe, damp hair, skin flushed. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s still hot.”
Steam curled through the room. The mirror was fogged. I stepped into the shower. The water hit hard. My knees almost gave, not from pain, just the weight of it all.
Twenty minutes later, I came back down—towel over my shoulders, shirt in hand.
She looked up. “We need sleep.”
Her steps up the stairs were slow. At the top, she paused—just for a second. The separate beds and temporary spaces, which had started as a necessity, had quietly settled into habit.
“I can sleep elsewhere,” I said.
She shook her head. “No.” Quieter the second time. “No.”
I moved closer. My hand found her waist. She didn’t move. I stayed there—skin under palm, steady. Then she leaned in and pressed a kiss to my jaw.
What Remains
I woke up again with no sense of what time it was. The space beside me was empty. Her robe hung on the bed frame, still swaying. I sat up and listened. Water ran. I waited, unsure if I should go after her, unsure if she’d want me to. The quiet pressed in, heavy with the weight of everything we hadn’t said.
She was in the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, standing at the mirror. One hand rested on her knee, on the scar that ran down in a pale, uneven line. It was a reminder of the fall, the surgery, and everything that came after. It marked not only what her body had endured but also what it continued to hold onto.
She stood there, tracing the scar with her fingertips. I didn’t speak. Her face held the kind of raw look that you don’t look away from. She caught my eyes in the mirror. I walked in, barefoot, the tile cool beneath me.
She turned, stepped into the embrace I offered.
We stayed at the cabin longer than planned. No talk of leaving, no real plan—just the rhythm that settled in: coffee, firewood, her blanket folded in the same place each night.
She moved slower now, but steadier. I brought in wood before she asked. She folded things that didn’t need folding. When she rested, I stayed close—not hovering, just near.
The coffee was always too weak. She drank it anyway, leaning against the counter while I cooked, hands around the same chipped mug. Once, she hummed—barely. I didn’t say anything, but I heard it.
By the third morning, the light shifted—low and warm through the windows, like it hadn’t forgotten us. She sat on the porch, knees drawn up, blanket around her shoulders. I joined her. We didn’t speak.
After a while, I reached into my shirt. The chain slipped free, the ring settling in my palm—the sapphire between two emeralds still catching light. I’d carried it every day. Not as a hope. Not exactly. Just something I couldn’t put down.
“I kept it close,” I said handing it to her. She looked, paused, and nodded.
“I saw it after the tests.” She stared at it like it was something she hadn’t let herself miss. She didn’t reach for it right away.
“Jul,” she said, her voice catching. “It feels like a different life.” When she finally reached for the ring, it was slow. Her fingers brushed mine, then closed around it, like she was trying to remember what it felt like to belong.
She moved her thumb across the stones. “I didn’t think I could wear it again,” she said. “Not because I didn’t want to. I just didn’t feel like the person you gave it to.”
I watched her. She turned the ring once. Then again. And then—quietly—she slid it on. It caught for a moment, then settled into place. She didn’t look at me, but she didn’t take it off.
She leaned into me. And I didn’t speak. I stayed. The morning stretched ahead—quiet, unfinished. But something had begun.
Author’s Note:
This story grew from conversations around invisible disability, recalibration, and the quiet negotiations that happen in the space between diagnosis and identity. While the characters are fictional, their experiences are shaped by lived realities—mine and others. If you’ve ever felt your body shift beneath you, or questioned how to stay present through that change, this piece is for you.
Note:The medical condition portrayed—length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy—is based on real diagnostic criteria, and while I’ve taken care to reflect both the physical and emotional impact with accuracy, this remains a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real individuals is purely coincidental.
If you would like to hear more about Kerry and Julian, feel free to leave a comment. Thank you for following www.wileyswalk.com! K.A. Wiley
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